Disillusioned with the politics of network television and the intricate financing of big studio films, filmmaker David Lynch has once again returned focus to his core business: being an artist.Inspired as a teen by realist painter Robert Henri, Lynch took Henri’s...
THAT WAS THEN THIS IS NOW. Ed Ruscha’s lithograph and the banner image for his 40-year survey at Gagosian Madison Avenue says it all: it was a different art world when Ruscha arrived in Los Angeles in 1956. Now, he’s blue chip and according to my editor, a...
When Pouya Afshar was a young boy in Tehran, his grandfather gave him a gun and told him to kill the crow that was eating the fruit off the trees in the garden. The young boy did as he was told. Later his grandfather told him the crow might have been a mother feeding...
One thing that came across in Jeff Koons’ recent Broad-sponsored (“Un-Private”) conversation with John Waters was a sense of the satisfaction Koons took from his work as a bond salesman and commodities trader on Wall Street. His fascination with commercial exchange...
Dear Readers,My mother always told me, “It’s a man’s world.” I vividly remember her saying that to me when I was crying in my bedroom after my boyfriend stood me up. Mom consoled me with those words, while patting my head and wiping away my tears. She also told me...
The Schorrs’ collection and career as collectors are bifurcated by their move to LA in 1989; before that, they were New York collectors, enjoying Soho parties and the tutelage of intellectual dealers such as Leo Castelli, plus the availability of great contemporary...
London has an ancient history. Londinium was established on the current site of the City of London around 43 AD and served as a major commercial center for the Roman Empire. Since then it’s grown like layers of alluvial rock to create a complex palimpsest that from...
The inaugural show at the newly opened Moskowitz Gallery on La Brea Avenue brings together the work of four young and talented artists: Alexa Guargilia, Mitch Weiss, Bill Maass and Adam Moskowitz. Although all four bring distinct technical approaches, distinct visual...
Ten years ago, I was driving down Venice Boulevard one morning, late to work as usual, when I spotted a large modern artwork among the bric-a-brac in front of a thrift store. It’s got to be a poster, I thought as I circled the block. But no, it was a framed abstract...
I’m listening to Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass’ Classics, Volume 1 as I write this. Besides being famous for his ’60s music, Alpert has apparently been making art for almost as long. I ran into his formidable sculptures again recently, this time at the Robert...
"Mexico is truly the promised land for abstract art." Anni & Josef Albers, 1936 “Mexico is the most surrealist country in the world.” Andre Breton, 1938 Why Mexico? It was not only that Mexico was nearby and easily accessible to U.S.–based artists, although that was...
Richard Jackson is a maniac with paint. His current retrospective is a testament to the gargantuan ambitions and massive amounts of energy he has displayed over a 40-plus-year career. The exhibition’s title, “Ain’t Painting a Pain,” is indicative of his commitment to...
Throughout his 1982 book All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman returns over and over to a single passage from Marx’s Communist Manifesto: All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept...
It was in 2009, while teaching art workshops in Ciudad Juárez, that artist Elina Chauvet became aware of the numbers of women and girls disappearing from the city’s streets. She was shocked by the many posters on phone poles and boards pleading for help locating...
Ever since 1912, when Picasso and Braque first collaged actual newspaper clippings and trompe-l’oeil woodgrain fragments into the first Synthetic Cubist oil paintings, the confusion between mass media and fine art has been one of the central engines of contemporary...
NARCISSISM MAY BE AT THE CORE OF SOME ARTISTIC PRACTICE, but rarely is it flaunted so grandly as in the work of Cindy Sherman. She has denied that her photographs are self-portraiture, but despite her assumption of various guises—sometimes so laden with prosthetics...
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